WEEK 6

The themes we had to study this week seemed to mingle in just one context after reading the articles proposed,namely to use technology appropriately, no matter the size of your class is.

I will first refer to the article ” Best Practices in Presenting with PowerPoint” from which I had revised something I knew adding also new things to me, as reflecting more on the audience and presentation. I especially liked the title in this article”don’t parrot the power-point” thing which we all were tempted to do at least once. It seems easier for the presenter, but it’s the worst possible for the audience. Blanking the screen is a technique I really like , as it presents advantages for both the audience, they have to focus only on on what you are saying and for you, as the audience attention is not ”split”anymore between you and the PPT.  Making the PPT interactive and mixing up the media are both pieces of advice everybody should take into consideration.  Rehearsing before presenting is imperative for everybody no matter how much experience they have in doing it.Using PowerPoint to Make an Interactive Story and a Jeopardy game are very useful resources. They are the best ways to make a lesson more interactive near the ConcepTests and Think-Pair-Share."The interactive lessons take the form of self-paced, student-controlled, individualized learning opportunities embedded with assessment events along the way." as I read in the article "Creating an Interactive PowerPoint Lesson for the Classroom". These lessons are visually-based, behavior-oriented; contain self-paced instructional content; offers specific, logical, systematic lessons; are student-initiated and student-controlled learning.

In the articles about on-line assessment I could find valuable information as well. I especially enjoyed the tutorials where everything is so clearly presented so as to build online assessments using different question types, thus being able to provide students with immediate feedback, (with the exception of essay questions). Instructors can use the Assessment features to test student knowledge, measure student progress, and gather information from students. I have also found information about Respondus which is a powerful tool for creating and managing exams that can be printed to paper or published directly to Blackboard and other eLearning systems.

In the video of Richard describing how he makes seminars interactive and engaging, on http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/earlycareer/teaching/seminars.html,  I saw the technique we usually use at least once a month usually at the end of a unit, when a class is divided into groups, each of th groups is given a different task and students  have to write a summary of what they have done on a sheet of paper, and one student nominated by the group will present the results to the rest of the class. Questions related to the topic will be asked and all the members of the group may contribute with answers. The moment when all the groups have finished their presentations will be followed by a summary of all the material presented. These types of lessons are  indeed very interactive, but the teacher has the responsability of helping each group, by adding supplimantary details, or leading them to the right path in case they misunderstood something, give advice etc. The teacher works as much as each of the members in the group, since responsabilities are equally shared from the very beginning.

Referring to the varieties of articles on ” Teaching Large Classes”, I would mention How to Create Memorable Lectures which  I consider meaningful to me. After reading the article I reflected on how little we were involved in the lectures we attended and how little we could remember. We are proposed several techniques I would partly apply to some of my lessons. Mingling the ideas of providing students with a framework for the lecture, not overloading them and using information that relates to ideas or experiences students are already familiar with, are the steps to follow. The teachers should orient their students’attention by telling them what to focus on. Giving brakes during the lecture, not using  too many different types of presentation materials at once and show students how specific skills can be applied to real-world problems are the results of the steps taken. The article”Teaching large classses” made  us familiar to some very useful activities like Think-Pair-Share, ConcepTest, interpreting graphs and making calculations , activities which are very helpful in our classes.

Last, but not least we were required to make an interactive power-point so as to put the theory into practice. It was a difficult decision whether to make a jeopardy game or an interactive story, but since my students like a lot when a competitive element applies to a lesson, I have chosen the former one. And now, I can congratulate you all for doing the task successfully. We are, as usual, learning a lot from each other.

Week 5- Top Quality Ingredients to Spice our Teaching Activity

What I want to say from the very beginning is the fact that making a summary of the week in order to post the information on our blog is the best way to offer our feed-back. The most important information is easier to be connected with  the other in the previous week and ready to connect with the one to come, so as to create a continuous chain for our final project.

The articles we had to read this week referred to alternative assessment, project –based learning and WebQuests.

As I have read in the article, Project, Problem, and Inquiry-based Learning students are engaged, excited and enthusiastic about PBL and so are the teachers.  On the site http://www.sun-associates.com/lynn/pbl/pbl.html we found that PBL presupposes to collect information and make observations, develop a hypothesis, make a prediction, do the experiment and communicate results. As I have read several more articles about this topic, I can say that PBL appears to be the best solution to totally engage the students and make them learn a lot effortlessly. In the article ”What Is Project-Based Learning?”, there are presented 4 types of learners who can help us create a lesson so as to make active all types of students where these characteristics predomine: spatial/visual, language-oriented, kinetitic and logical learner.

Concerning WebQuests, I consider they are brilliant since they are inquiry-oriented lessons. If well-designed , they have enormous advantages. Some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the internet. A WebQuest  should contain an introduction ,a task, a set of information sources needed to complete the task,a  description of the process the learners should go through in accomplishing the task and some guidance on how to organize the information acquired, and  a conclusion that brings closure to the quest. WebQuests are designed to be group activities and should include motivational elements  involving either a single discipline or more disciplines thus transdisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity are involved.

Alternative assessment insists on what students know, on their strong points, thus the students being  encouraged to learn more. Alternative assessment elements are differently sructured, scored and graded. They apply in student-oriented cases and they insist on veridicity of the requests, topics, having the advantage of letting the students self-assess since they know from the beginning the things to lead them to  a top-grade.

All the three dimensions presented above, when you know the exact quantity of ingredients to add, will create a perfect combination, a relevant lesson both for teachers  and their students having as result making them more autonomous learners. So far, I have never used any of the types mentioned above, even if I was familiar to rubrics and checklist. I consider them all relatively easy to use, and for sure all of them can be applied successfully with my students who are so open-minded and enjoy everything which is different of ”traditional”.

At project task 4, I liked especilally the idea of working in pairs or groups at the disscussion referring to what solutions we can come up with to the problems we have at school. Our ideas were in this way reinforced or we have got others which made us think deeper, or better said, higher. The solutions to be applied for my classroom, something I am not doing at the moment is to create a webquest, I’m not sure yet if it will be ready by Sunday night, and to use a blog as well where my students should post their works so as to make not only themselves and teachers proud , but their parents as well.

For the task this week, I have realised a rubric on http://rubistar.4teachers.org/ having as URL http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=ShowRubric&module=Rubistar&rubric_id=2072769&   which  I  posted  on the wiki page. I have already used the site to create several more rubrics and even if one wants to add or to delete certain rows, it still helps you a lot in your work. 

The title I used this week came up into my mind as I understood that I learnt about very useful things relatively easy to apply at the context in my school. I am willing  to say that all these would make my teaching innovative as long as I would apply them in appropriate moments of my teaching.

WEEK 4

Week by week I understand that we are given pieces of work just like those of the puzzles to create our final project.

The articles we were proposed to read opened us new paths to organising our lessons in a more attractive way referring to the skills of reading, writing and vocabulary. In the article "Three Extensive Reading Activities for ESL/EFL Students Using E-books",written by Mei-Ya Liang we found out that by reading interesting and authentic materials, each student's motivation and confidence in learning and using the foreign language increases. When students have understood that by reading , they enter a wonderful world with so many possibilities to visit and get to know realms of all kind, in which both dialogues as well as personal reflection are involved, our objectives are totally fulfilled. To sustain what I have said I quote Aldous Huxley :- “Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting”.  

Considering writing, Jarek Krajka  writes in his article " Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instructions", that on-line writing instruction should not be used all the time, or the Web materials only, but rather a teacher should enrich lessons with the Net component when it is really profitable for students and could help them in their learning. The Internet component is not a goal in itself, but it is rather a useful teaching aid, and it should be subjected to the general syllabus to enrich and give variety and authenticity to learning English.

The role of the teacher in the classes where technology is used is very demanding ,but also very rewarding.

If everything had been perfect with our students or with the materials we use, our roles would have been useless. There are times when I perfectly understand how important our role is in identifying problems and involving to the maximum in order to solve them. We were asked to identify problems we have to face in our school and I have referred to materials, to the teacher, to the parents and to the students as well. I hardly wait to identify solutions for all the problems I have mentioned here. It’s great fun to think at several solutions and then choose the best one; we ourselves develop the critical thinking and then we can easily ”pass” it to our students.

The most enjoyable task  for me was to write the lesson plan. We are not obliged anymore after 2 years of experience to write a complete plan , but to have only a draft so, I was very happy to write a complete one using the very well-structured model. It was something really new for me to include so many activities using the technology within the same hour. I enjoyed writing my plan at the rewarding thought of my students’smiling faces, because they were willing all the time to  use such means during English lessons. Lack of space and materials let me do it rarely enough. I have already thought at a solution for being able to use computers in almost all my lessons, even if it would be difficult. I let you know about it next week, when we have to come up with solutions for the problems identified.

“The road to success is always under construction”- Lily Tomlin, so we have few more steps to see our project finished.

Thank you, Laura- Cristiana

WEEK 3

The more effort we make, the happier we are after we have done all the tasks. I think that everybody agrees. The third week, the third step we made, proved fatidic to me since I didn’t have enough time to solve the tasks relaxed, due to some exams that approach, but in an allert pace. Did you know that living in an allert rhythm keeps you younger for a longer period of time? So, Thank you, Donna.

Concerning the articles we had to read for the discussions post, I especially enjoyed reading Lindsay Miller’s article “Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials” because listening was this year my favourite activity since I discovered my students’ interest growing lesson by lesson. I usually followed the steps she mentions, but after reading her article I will insist more on post-listening activities through extended discussions or role-play activities since they enjoy acting so much. I like the lessons where the receptive skill , listening is then followed by the productive one, speaking. Lidsay showed in her article that “There are several benefits computer software has over radio or television. For instance, many CD-ROMs now have glossaries and online scripts, so that when problems are encountered, the learners can get online help.” but each of us has to adapt to the materials we have, and as long as listening authentic material is practised, the results will be visible. Our students will become both good listeners and speakers in these lessons.

Creating my delicious page was another thing which made me step further in the world of technology after creating my blog. The fact that I can access my delicious page from any computer and I can share sites with everybody, made me tell about “this discovery”  to all my colleagues. Some were very enthusiastic about it. I got to the conclusion that the biography lists which were given to us at the end of the school years will be quite soon replaced by tags on the bookmarking sites. In the article “ Technology Tip of the Month”, Deborah Healey writes that “You may want to go back and add or change tags as you get more precise in your categories”, which makes Delicious a flexible tool at hand , but  for our minds.


No wonder Donna let us read some samples of final projects. As a result, we have given our brain commands to start looking for ideas, put them together and give birth something nicely written but feasible in the same time, otherwise being superficial and useless work. I have chosen Nadina Nicolici’s project from the Lorin Salagean Technical High School in Drobeta Turnu Severin, Romania. The teacher had as goals helping her students improve their reading and communication abilities and also use the internet for what is important not just for entertainment. She described how her classes looked before and after implementing technology in the way she was taught at this course. The project respected all the requests and all the information she used came to support the final result. She made such a good description of using technology in her classes , referring to the increasing interest of her students and to the good results she obtained with them, that all the teachers who read her project might be easily convinced to use technology in their classes.

Nobody can become better unless s/he is stimulated and motivated. Donna has given us both opportunities, stimulated us to accomplish the tasks and motivated us to start thinking to our final project. The task, the discussions and the project task seemed demanding and required some time, but the effort was rewarding.

  

WEEK 2

       Without using technology, our classes can't be attractive, as much as we try keeping our students occupied and interested in what we're teaching. So technology in our classroom is a blessing.

     What I liked a lot about this week so far was the fact that I found out much new information by reading the articles proposed before completing the assignements. http://pages.uoregon.edu/dhealey/techtips/june2009.html is such an example. Accessing the site we were recommended, www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies/information/5locate/adviceengine.html- I was amazed of its clear organization and presentation. I would compare it with an enormous tree with an infinite number of branches and sub branches. Some articles I found here, and I can’t enumerate them all, can really help my students read authentic materials, and also will give them the possibility to work on genuine texts. Accessing this site, I understood that especially for teachers, it is much better to access specialised sites, rather than Google for at least two reasons: the information we find may be more complex and it is not as time consuming as it would be accessing the other common sites.

      Referring to the other topic we had to deal with, namely writing objectives, I admit that whenever we wrote objectives for our lessons, we tended to omit at least one of the four categories we have properly used in this course. I will personally pay more attention  not only in writing them correctly, but also in using them in classroom considering all four perspectives: audience, behaviour, conditions and degree. The students will benefit as much as we do, since we have everything clearly organised from the very beginning: sources and expectation, input and output.

     I thank all my colleagues for the valuable information they have posted on the Nicenet and to you Donna for your prompt and encouraging feed-back.